26 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OP PLANTS. 



the manners of the Laplanders, he even traversed what is 

 called the Lapland Desert, a tract of territory destitute of 

 villages, cultivation, or any conveniences, and inhabited only 

 by a few straggling people. In this district he ascended 

 a mountain called Wallevary, in speaking of which he has 

 given us a pleasant relation of his finding a singular and 

 beautiful new plant, Andromeda tetragona, when travelling 

 within the Arctic Circle, with the sun in his view at mid- 

 night, in search of a Lapland hut."'* He travelled on foot, 

 we are told, the whole way, from near the northern extremity 

 of the Gulf of Bothnia to the shore of the Arctic Ocean, 

 attended by two Laplanders, one his interpreter and the 

 other his guide. 



That name of the " Lapland Desert" helps out wonder- 

 fully the picture of these regions. The names of a few 

 heaths, and the plants which commonly grow intermixed 

 with them, are soon read over ; but when the idea of these 

 few species of plants has been taken in, it must be expanded 

 till we see in imagination vast tracts of woodless heathland, 

 forming a large proportion of all those countries which 

 border on the Frozen Sea. 



It is doubtless under the covert of these heaths that our 



* From the Life of Linnaeus, by Dr. Pulteney. 



